Byzantines, Latins, and Turks in the Eastern Mediterranean World after 1150 (Oxford Studies in Byzantium) - Tapa dura

This is a very good book ... It gives a new and important picture of the eastern Mediterranean in the late medieval period, from 1150 onwards, including revisionist discussions of the rise of the Ottomans and the last period of Byzantium, and it questions recent hypotheses about the role of the Mediterranean in history. (Averil Cameron, English Historical Review)

Every scholar or research library with interests of the late medieval eastern Mediterranean should have a copy. (Spyros P. Panagopoulos, Al-Masaq: The Journal of the Medieval Mediterranean)

The late medieval eastern Mediterranean, before its incorporation into the Ottoman Empire in the sixteenth century, presents a complex and fragmented picture. The Ayyubid and Mamluk sultanates held sway over Egypt and Syria, Asia Minor was divided between a number of Turkish emirates, the Aegean between a host of small Latin states, and the Byzantine Empire was only a fragment of its former size.

This collection of thirteen original articles, by both established and younger scholars, seeks to find common themes that unite this disparate world. Focusing on religious identity, cultural exchange, commercial networks, and the construction of political legitimacy among Christians and Muslims in the late Medieval eastern Mediterranean, they discuss and analyse the interaction between these religious cultures and trace processes of change and development within the individual societies. A detailed introduction provides a broad geopolitical context to the contributions and discusses at length the broad themes which unite the articles and which transcend traditional interpretations of the eastern Mediterranean in the later medieval period.